Neil Shenvi's Debate - I Don't Think it Went That Well

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You guys seen this debate from the Unbelievable program? It was just uploaded the other day, and it's about critical theory.

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Is critical theory compatible with Christianity? So you know it's right up my alley. And it was between Neil Shenvey and Pastor Razul Barry.

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And I gotta say, I really don't think that this debate went very well for our side of this issue. Yeah, you might find that weird to hear, but I do.

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And I think that a person who's not acquainted with this fight, not acquainted with this debate, could very well walk away from this thing and think, well, critical theory sounds like it's pretty good.

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It sounds like it's biblical and all that kind of stuff. And frankly, Neil did a good job with what he said.

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I didn't really find too much to disagree with Neil about. There was a few quibbles here and there, but overall, he was sharp as he always is.

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But he did what he always does, and he keeps it in this theoretical kind of scholarly realm.

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And it's really disconnected from the actual fight that's in front of him. And I think that that's a very big deficiency.

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So we're gonna talk about an example in the conversation that I think really illustrates this.

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But let me say this, Neil, to be perfectly honest, this is what, we've talked about this a number of times, privately, where you obviously think that my content is sinful in some way because I'm talking to people directly about specific beliefs, and I'm drawing conclusions, and I'm, you know, things like that.

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And I know you think I go overboard all the time. But you see, this is the problem, though. Like, you need street fighters like me, like Jacob Brunton, like John Harris, like Cody Libel, and stuff like that.

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I don't agree with everything that all these guys say, but the thing is, they are definitely willing to take it to the streets, man.

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Like, Razul here, he came ready for a street fight, and he was talking about, at least attempting, to talk about real life.

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And honestly, like, Neil, you kept it in the theoretical so much that it almost looked like you were running away from confronting

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Razul directly. And that's what's needed here, because error is not like this thing out there floating in the ether.

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Error is embodied. People are the ones who believe error. So you gotta confront the people.

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And so your methodology, your approach is deficient.

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And I'm not saying that you need to change. This is the thing, because I've said this many times in this channel, like, if you look at Ezra and Nehemiah from the

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Bible, they're operating around the same time, they're doing about the same stuff. Ezra's got this scholarly sort of approach.

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He's a very winsome guy, very ironic, and stuff like that. And Nehemiah's like this brute who wants the same things.

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They're trying to go for the same goals, and they're working together. They probably butted heads a little bit, but they're working together to accomplish the same goals.

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And he's beating people over their heads, he's pulling people's beards out, and God blesses both things. And this is the thing,

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Neil, I wanna work with you. I want to be on your team, and I'm willing. Look, I recommend

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Neil's stuff all the time, and I know people look at me sideways sometimes when I do. In fact, just yesterday, my pastor was over at my house, and he told me just a horrible story.

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Neil, this critical theory stuff, you know this. It's not just in books. It's affecting real people and real churches every day.

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My pastor told me about this church in Vermont, and Vermont doesn't have very many black people, but this church had one black family that recently left, and in the process has caused all kinds of division in the church because they said that the church was racist.

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Do you wanna know why they said the church was racist? Because the pastor had the audacity to say unequivocally, we unequivocally, unequivocally, yeah.

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Unequivocally, we are against looting, and rioting. You just have to be against that if you're a Christian, and they didn't add, and by the way, white people are responsible for it.

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They didn't add that, because that's the pinch of incense that you give to critical theory. You gotta say it's white people's fault. Critical theory, in a nutshell, is just it's white people's fault.

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That's critical theory. So the thing is, this church is now on the verge of splitting up, and this pastor's trying to navigate this.

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How did they come to this conclusion that if I'm against rioting, I'm a racist, right? And they came to this conclusion through people like Rasul Berri, because Rasul Berri, in this conversation, bore false witness a number of times, and he really didn't get called on it,

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Neil, and this is the problem when you keep it in the theoretical instead of fighting the fight that's right in front of you.

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You miss opportunities, and this is the thing, man. This is the thing. My pastor asked me, he said, do you recommend

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Neil Shenbey? Is he solid? And I told him what I tell everybody about you, Neil. I said, you are solid.

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You understand this probably better than I do. You understand the primary sources probably better than I do, but you are unwilling to apply it to people.

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You're unwilling to say that person, that thing that that person says, I know they claim the name of Christ, but that is critical theory, and that's a big problem.

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That's a big problem, Neil, and that's why someone will walk away from this debate on unbelievable and be like, well,

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Rasul sounds pretty reasonable. He doesn't. He doesn't. He doesn't sound reasonable at all to me.

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So let me talk about this. So Neil, I keep saying this. I keep getting sidetracked, but Neil, I wanna be on,

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I wanna fight with you, man. I wanna fight with you. I don't wanna have to protect my rear guard with you sniping about my style and about all this stuff.

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You can always criticize if I go overboard, but the whole idea, though, of not naming names and not calling out evangelical leaders, people that are supposed to be on our team for the nonsense that they spout, that's gotta stop, man.

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I'm not saying you have to do it, but just stop saying that that's un -Christian for some reason.

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No, it's not un -Christian. Believing all things doesn't require you to be naive, man. So if J .D.

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Greer or if Russell Moore or if the BD Anyabwili or if Jamar Tisby or any of these guys are spreading critical theory, whether they know it or not makes no difference to me because the result is the same.

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We gotta call them on that. We gotta call them on that. So let me give you an example. So what happened in this debate in the very beginning,

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Neil Shenby was asked to give a definition for critical theory, and he did, and it was really good. And this is why

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I know how sharp Neil is because he can take all kinds of data and all kinds of sources and he can distill it down into a very succinct definition, and his definition was fantastic.

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And then Razul was asked to give a definition for critical theory, too, and he gave this squishy, sort of vague, nebulous definition that if you applied it,

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I'm a critical theorist because I talk about race and how it impacts social, economic issues and stuff like that.

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I talk about the disparities and how race impacts that. But you see, critical theory's much more than that, obviously.

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Everybody understands that. Like, this is the thing that people always say, well, I got canceled because I started,

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I was the black man that started talking about race and that's not allowed. Like, I talk about race all day. I never get called a

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Marxist. I never get called a critical theorist. So obviously, there's more to the definition than what Razul, Pastor Razul, was saying.

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And Neil, to your credit, you called him on that. You said your definition's way too nebulous. That was true.

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And then instantly, what Razul said, and you guys, watch this debate. This is my take on what happened.

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Let me know if you think this is what happened. Instantly, Razul gave up the debate. He said, well, that's not what

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I mean by critical theory. I know that every critical theory source in the history of the world says that this is what critical theory is, but that's not what

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I mean about critical theory. Besides, I don't even care about critical theory. I wanna talk about what's happening in the streets.

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I don't care about critical theory. And so at that point, guys, let's just get this out. At that point,

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Razul gave up the debate. Neil had won. Neil had won because at this point, Razul was saying,

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I'm not talking about critical theory anymore. I'm not talking about critical theory anymore. I'm talking about what black people have believed for 100 years.

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And you see, this is the thing. So Neil kept, keeps talking about the dictionary definition of critical theory.

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He keeps talking about the primary sources. And that's fine because everything Neil said was right.

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He was speaking truth, right? But he wasn't engaging Razul because Razul gave up the debate instantly and said,

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I don't really care about this stuff. I never learned it as critical theory. I just know that this is what we've been saying for hundreds of years, this voice of the oppressed and this and that.

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And I got people in my church that are scared to go jogging like Ahmaud Arbery, because they're going to be gunned down by a white person.

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And you see, at that point, like Neil, you have to call him on that, man. You have to engage this the way he's engaging it.

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He's taking it to the street level. You got to be a street fighter now. And so it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

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Razul, number one, you've given up this debate because I've given you a clear definition with sources citing all the primary documents of what critical theory is.

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You said you don't believe it. So I would assume that you mean that critical race theory is incompatible with Christianity since that's not what you believe.

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Now let's talk about what you believe. Because regardless of where you got it, regardless of whether or not you know it's critical theory, regardless of where,

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I don't care where you learned it. If you learned it in a Marxism class or an Africana social studies class, or if you learned it from your daddy, it doesn't matter.

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It's not right. It's not right what you are saying. Neal talks about this a little bit. He says, well, critical theorists define oppression in a backwards way, but Razul doesn't care because he's already given up the debate.

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He's not talking about critical theory. He's just talking about the Bible and the Bible says God's on the side of the oppressed. And so we need to take it to the streets, man.

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We need to talk to Razul. Okay, so when you say that a statistical disparity means that black people are oppressed, where'd you get that from the

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Bible? Because the thing is, I know he did not get that from the Bible because that's not how the Bible defines oppression.

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That's not how the Bible defines partiality. I can quote verse after verse after verse that affirms statistical disparities and wealth disparities and income disparities as godly and good.

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And God is the one who does it. So unless we're gonna call God the biggest oppressor of all time, Razul has a lot to answer for here.

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I don't care. Again, if he knows it's critical theory or not, or if he thinks that black people just came up with this on their own for hundreds of years, and this is what we've always believed.

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I don't care if this is what you've always believed. It's not biblical. It's not biblical. And so this is the thing, man.

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You gotta be a little bit of a street fighter to say something like that. Because I don't care if the black tradition has said this for forever.

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It doesn't do me any good to not engage you there and to stay in the theoretical, talking about the latest scholarly paper about critical theory.

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That's where Neil wants to stay. And if that's where he wants to stay, that's fine. But this is why we need John Harris and Jacob Brunton and Cody Leibel and myself and things like that, because we're willing to have this conversation with Razul as a person.

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Razul, you don't wanna talk about critical theory? Great, let's talk about your nonsense. Let's talk about how you bore false witness in this debate when you said that Ahmaud Arbery was just a jogger and white people go hunting for joggers if they're black.

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That's bearing false witness. You're gonna have to answer to God for that. Tell me where in the Bible it says that you can just make up your narrative and I'm supposed to believe it, otherwise

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I'm a white supremacist bigot. It's not there. It's not there. You can explain to me with the scripture how these statistical disparities mean that you're like the most oppressed person of all time as you sit here with your laptop and your video camera and your microphone and your headphones.

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Yeah, you look really oppressed. This is the thing, man. We need people that can take it to the streets.

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And Neil, I love you, brother. I recommend your stuff all the time and I will continue to recommend your stuff, but always with a caveat.

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Always with a caveat at this point, because you are just not willing to engage this on the street level and that's where we need to engage it.

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By the way, guys, this is an advertisement for my book because I have a book upcoming called How to Defeat the

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Woke Church Movement and that's what the book is all about. It's about taking this to the street level, equipping you with scripture, the scriptures that the social justice warriors will use to try to use against you.

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In fact, they won't use them, they'll abuse them. They treat the scripture like a slogan book. That's the same way

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Satan treated the scripture. You remember Satan when he tempted Christ? He was throwing slogans at Christ.

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They were scripture verses. Yes, he was quoting the Bible, but he was using it like a slogan completely disconnected from its context.

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Well, how did Christ handle it? He brought back the scriptures into context and he said, nope, you're not gonna treat the

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Bible like a slogan book, Satan. We're not gonna let the social justice warriors do the same thing, let justice roll down like water's gods on the side of the oppressed.

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Yes, those are Bible verses, but you've robbed them of their meaning when you take them out of the context and use them like a slogan the way

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Satan used the scripture. So that's what my book is about. It's going to equip you on the layman's level, on the street level, the level where it's actually connected to human life.

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I'm not saying there's no place for what Neil does. I appreciate Neil. I learned so much from Neil. I learned more from Neil than maybe anyone else in this fight.

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Neil, I love your stuff, but I would just suggest, and you don't have to do this, man. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, but I think we could accomplish a lot more as teammates.

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I think we could accomplish a lot more if we could be friends in such a way that you're not shooting me in the back when

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I go out there and say, Thabiti, you gotta stop this, you racist. We're taking it to the streets, man, and we're gonna do it with you or without you.

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It doesn't matter, but I would much prefer to do it with you. Neil, I love you, brother. I don't think this debate did us any good because of your unwillingness to actually engage this person as a person and instead keep it in a theoretical with peer -reviewed journals.

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It's good, it's helpful in a way, but eventually it has to touch real life. Otherwise, what good is it?